Work and Home No Longer Balance, They Blend

WE: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement

"There is nothing more important for a person or an organization than full engagement."

That quote from Rudy Karsan, CEO and Chairman of Kenexa (Salary.com's parent company), is the basis for his book We: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement. Full engagement differs from happiness in that it means employers have motivated fully engaged employees to want to go the extra mile to achieve goals. But how often does your company really give serious consideration to how engaged you are?

In this podcast, Karsan talks to Aaron and Wendy about the significant implications engagement has on employees and businesses. With smartphones and the Internet, the days of punching a time clock and leaving your work at the door when you go home are over, Karsan says.

Instead of a Career-Life Balance, most people are headed towards a Career-Life Blend, in which your work and home lives are forever intertwined. That's why employees and employers alike need to know a bad work situation can spill over at home and create marital angst, poor parenting and other problems. So why should the company care? Karsan says because the employee then takes those personal problems to the office, at which point productivity suffers, the bottom line decreases and eventually the result is high turnover costs associated with hiring a new person for the job.

Also, employees can determine whether or not they will be a "cultural fit" with the company by considering things such as flex scheduling and telecommuting, which will increase both employee retention and satisfaction.

Basically, if you're still harboring delusions that your work day ends at 5 p.m. in a world where work and home never meet, you need to listen to this podcast.